Extremal Problems for Subset Divisors

Tony Huynh

Abstract

Let $A$ be a set of $n$ positive integers. We say that a subset $B$ of $A$ is a divisor of $A$, if the sum of the elements in $B$ divides the sum of the elements in $A$. We are interested in the following extremal problem. For each $n$, what is the maximum number of divisors a set of $n$ positive integers can have? We determine this function exactly for all values of $n$. Moreover, for each $n$ we characterize all sets that achieve the maximum. We also prove results for the $k$-subset analogue of our problem. For this variant, we determine the function exactly in the special case that $n=2k$. We also characterize all sets that achieve this bound when $n=2k$.